The Charter of Amiens

The CGT 1906

At its Ninth Congress, in 1906, the CGT passed, by a vote of 830 for, eight against, and one abstention, the following document — a key revolutionary syndicalist text — stressing the need for the movement to maintain its independence from all political parties.

The Confederation’s congress of Amiens confirms Article 2 as foundational of the CGT. [1]

Outside of all political schools, the CGT groups together all workers conscious of the fight to be carried out for the disappearance of the salaried and of employers.

The Congress regards this declaration as a recognition of the class struggle which, on the economic plain, sets the workers in revolt in opposition to all forms of exploitation and oppression — material as well as moral — put in place by the capitalist class against the working class.

The congress clarifies — by the following points — this theoretical assertion.

In daily protest work the union pursues the coordination of working class efforts, and the growth of the well being of workers, through the carrying out of immediate improvements, such as the diminution in work hours, the increase in salaries, etc. But this task is only one side of the work of syndicalism: it prepares complete emancipation, which can only be fulfilled by expropriation of the capitalists; it advocates as a method of action the general strike; and it considers that the union, today a resistance group will be, in the future, a group for production and redistribution, the basis of social reorganization.

The Congress declares that this double task, daily and in the future, flows from the situation which weighs on the working class, and which renders obligatory for all workers — whatever their opinions or their political or philosophical leanings — membership in that essential group that is the union.

In consequence, as far as it concerns individuals, the Congress asserts the complete freedom for union member to participate — outside of his corporate grouping — in those forms of struggle that correspond to his philosophical or political concepts, limiting itself to asking him in exchange to not introduce into the union the opinions he professes outside it.

As far as it concerns organizations, the Congress declares that in order for syndicalism to achieve its maximum effect, economic action must be carried out directly against the bosses, the confederated organizations not having to involve themselves, as a union group, with parties and sects that can, outside and alongside, pursue social transformation in complete freedom.